...These emerging beliefs provided the legal community with a framework within which to justify increasingly rigid separation between blacks and whites and increasingly stringent definitions of blackness. One clear example may be found in Judge Thomas M. Norwood's remarks in 1907, entitled "Address on the Negro," in which he reflected upon his experiences dealing with black defendants over the years. After detailing the inferiority of the black race, Norwood explained to his audience that miscegenation was a horrible threat to the nation. Even though the law forbade interracial sex, having legal prohibitions on the books was not sufficient to curb the evil: "illicit miscegenation thrives and the proof stalks abroad in breeches and petticoats along our streets and highways." This proof was the mixed-race issue of such unions.

Norwood's beliefs about black inferiority did not permit him to blame "pure" blacks for the increases in racial mixing. He placed the blame squarely on white men, who made and enforced the laws against miscegenation and prevented black men from crossing the color line, while simultaneously "wallow[ing] with dusky Diana with impunity." This practice by white men, in Norwood's view, was particularly damaging to white women. Women married to men who engaged in interracial sex would bear the shame of knowing that their children had black half siblings. Their white daughters would flinch at having to acknowledge a black child's salute of them as sisters.

While Norwood saw "full-blooded Negroes" as childlike, easily led, humble, and nonthreatening, he believed that mulattoes, due to the admixture of whiteness, were a genuine threat both in their prominence and in their attitudes. He argued that all prominent black persons in the United States had white or Native American ancestry to thank for their abilities and that all were hostile to whites. His solution to this problem, which would have been unconstitutional even under the prevailing racist standards, was to "Draw a dead line between the races. Tell the Negro, when he crosses it the penalty is death. Tell the white man, when he crosses it the penitentiary is there." ...

Christopher Petrella, Lecturer in the Humanities and the Associate Director of Equity and DiversityBates College, Lewiston, Maine

In November 2015 Donald Trump was asked on the campaign trail if he would require Muslim U.S. citizens to register with the Department of Homeland Security. â€śAbsolutely,â€ť Trump said, â€śthey have to be.â€ť Trump and his team had been mum on the issue until last week when a number of prominent surrogates and advisersâ€”including incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Trumpâ€™s immigration adviser Kris Kobachâ€”mused, seemingly as a test balloon, that the administration is â€śnot going to rule out anythingâ€ť and that a registry of Muslims entering the country would pass constitutional muster. One member of Trumpâ€™s team went as far as citing the 1942â€“45 internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II as a â€śprecedent.â€ť (Both statements were hedged with qualifications that made them no less worrisome.)

Since then, many commentators have roundly condemned the idea of a Muslim registryâ€”not to mention citing the internment of Japanese-Americans as a precedent for anything except that which we must avoid repeating. Few have offered deeper historical examinations , though, that would suggest that the registration of Japanese-Americans and their subsequent movement to concentration camps were not really aberrations in American history. On the contrary, racial and ethnic registries and immigration quota systems have long been integral to Americaâ€™s approach to regulating the freedom, movement, and rights of non-whites. Two pieces of legislation passed in the same year nearly a century agoâ€”one federal, one in the state of Virginiaâ€”reflect the recurrent appeal in the United States of laws aimed at protecting the racial purity of whatever is indexed in a given moment as best representing American nationalism…

…In the same year as the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, the Commonwealth of Virginia passed its Racial Integrity Act, originally drafted as â€śA Bill for the Preservation of the White Race.â€ť The Racial Integrity Act of 1924 explicitly forbade miscegenationâ€”that is, â€śrace mixing through marriage and fornicationâ€ťâ€”on the basis that such practices would â€śpollute [the nation] with mixed-blood offspring.â€ť…